Madam, – Further to An Irishman's Diary (March 26th), back in the early 1990s the obituary page of the British Medical Journalregularly advised as follows: "We welcome self-written obituaries and good quality, recent photographs and, as a medical journal, we encourage authors to include the cause of death."
So impressed was I by this talent that to this day, every time I make a doctor’s acquaintance at, say, a dinner party or some other social occasion, one of the first things I ask them is what their exact cause of death will be. Sometimes they don’t know and I’ll settle for an educated guess. Others I’ve asked have clearly been guilty of wishful thinking. – Yours, etc,